10-year-old app developer's advice to other kids: Get coding now

Meet Yuma Soerianto, the young 10-year-old app developer from Australia flown to San Francisco to learn about apps at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference.
Video by Jefferson Graham

SAN JOSE — It's not every day that Apple invites an app maker to its big developer conference for free, lets him hang around with CEO Tim Cook and schmooze with former First Lady Michelle Obama.

But that indeed happened to Yuma Soerianto from Melbourne, Australia, who has achieved mini rock-star status this week at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. After all, he's ten years old and already has five apps in the App Store, with more on the way.

"I only learned coding (the skill to make apps) from online," he says. "I never had the chance to talk to someone who could teach me coding, so it's a privilege to be here and learn from someone I can talk to."

This is the second year in a row that Apple has invited an ultra young student (most are in their teens and college age) for WWDC. Last year's recipient was also from Australia, Anvitha Vijay.

Apple invited Soerianto after he applied for the scholarship, showed his "Anyone Can Code," channel on YouTube, and his five apps. The apps are credited to dad Hendri , himself a designer and app developer, due to Apple's rules requiring developers to be of legal age. They were created on the family MacBook Air using Apple's Xcode software, using gaming and cartoon layouts. The apps range fromWeather Duck, where a talking duck gives you the weather report, to Kid Calculator, where Yuma's young voice reads out the numbers as they are generated.

When not coding, attending school or doing homework, he studies martial arts.

Yuma may sound like an adult, but he knows a good prank when he sees one. He says he gets asked this question in every interview: "What do you want to be when you grow up." His jokey response? To USA TODAY, it's "Become a train." To the Sydney Morning Herald, it's "I want to be Batman."

But seriously, his goal is to make apps that "can revolutionize the world. I want to fix problems."

His message to other kids--get coding now. "If you don't start coding, you might lag behind."

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